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Thursday, May 8, 2008 3:32 AM
By Rob Oller
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
By now, it should be quite apparent that none of us knows jack.
Don't know Roger, Darrion or Marvin, either.
We just think we do.
You receive an autograph with a smile and think Peyton Superstar is one heck of a nice guy. A reporter struggles through a contentious interview with Barry Belligerent and labels him king of the creeps.
In reality, those snippets tell us little about the real person, the one who acts like a fool in front of a camera but is a nice guy in his neighborhood. Or the one who sounds like a saint on the radio but actually is a champion sinner behind the scenes.
We think we know these athletes, even though we've only viewed their personality through a peephole. So we're surprised when police question Indianapolis Colts receiver Marvin Harrison after a shooting near a car detail shop he owns in the tough North Philadelphia neighborhood where he grew up. Harrison has been portrayed as an ultra-private and polite player who would seem to be the last person on earth to reportedly own a Belgian FN5.7 handgun, known as a "cop-killer" because it fires armor-piercing rounds.
On the other hand, there is Terrell Owens, whose antics paint him as a problem child. But so far the Dallas Cowboys' receiver has not been linked to a shooting or other illegal activity involving violence.
The illusion that "what you see is always what you get" hit close to Columbus this week when former Ohio State and Minnesota Vikings defensive lineman Darrion Scott was charged with assault in Minnesota and accused of holding a plastic dry-cleaning bag over his 2-year-old son's head. He also was charged with child endangerment for allegedly keeping a loaded, unsecured handgun in an unlocked nightstand.
Scott was one of the most mild-mannered players -- off the field, anyway -- on the Buckeyes' 2002 national championship team. Always courteous and cordial, he appeared to be a model citizen before leaving for the NFL after his senior season in 2003.
So this ugly episode is surprising. But with all that has happened since Sept. 7, 1979 -- the launch date of ESPN, which turned the reporting of sports information into a round-the-clock fixation -- you'd think we would have learned not to be shocked by anything involving any athlete. Yet we keep having these jaw-dropping moments, continually forgetting that, as Mark Twain put it, "Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."
The truth is that few know where athletes go or what they do there upon leaving the locker room.
A retired NFL writer once told me that O.J. Simpson was the most accommodating and gracious athlete he ever interviewed. Roger Clemens was thought to be a lot of things -- ornery, combative and arrogant, to name a few -- but cheater and philanderer weren't part of the for-public-consumption equation. Len Bias absolutely, positively could not have died because of a cocaine bender. Until he did.
The temptation to turn "good" athletes into angels derives from our actually wanting to be duped. We seek to avoid the sharp corners and rough edges of reality and instead fill our sports world with dream furniture, which C.S. Lewis described as the only kind on which you never stub your toes or bang your knee.
We know we should separate the performer from the person, but doing so is difficult. We want athletes to be shiny and colossal in scale; everything about them to be bigger if not necessarily inherently better than ourselves.
Still, keeping a healthy separation between the star and the moon of which Twain spoke must happen. Otherwise, it becomes too easy to slip into cynicism, disappointment and judgment.
The safest and sanest way to enjoy sports is to appreciate the abilities of athletes without endeavoring to know them, because sometimes to know them is not to love them.
Rob Oller is a sports reporter for The Dispatch.
roller@dispatch.com
LINK
By Rob Oller
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
By now, it should be quite apparent that none of us knows jack.
Don't know Roger, Darrion or Marvin, either.
We just think we do.
You receive an autograph with a smile and think Peyton Superstar is one heck of a nice guy. A reporter struggles through a contentious interview with Barry Belligerent and labels him king of the creeps.
In reality, those snippets tell us little about the real person, the one who acts like a fool in front of a camera but is a nice guy in his neighborhood. Or the one who sounds like a saint on the radio but actually is a champion sinner behind the scenes.
We think we know these athletes, even though we've only viewed their personality through a peephole. So we're surprised when police question Indianapolis Colts receiver Marvin Harrison after a shooting near a car detail shop he owns in the tough North Philadelphia neighborhood where he grew up. Harrison has been portrayed as an ultra-private and polite player who would seem to be the last person on earth to reportedly own a Belgian FN5.7 handgun, known as a "cop-killer" because it fires armor-piercing rounds.
On the other hand, there is Terrell Owens, whose antics paint him as a problem child. But so far the Dallas Cowboys' receiver has not been linked to a shooting or other illegal activity involving violence.
The illusion that "what you see is always what you get" hit close to Columbus this week when former Ohio State and Minnesota Vikings defensive lineman Darrion Scott was charged with assault in Minnesota and accused of holding a plastic dry-cleaning bag over his 2-year-old son's head. He also was charged with child endangerment for allegedly keeping a loaded, unsecured handgun in an unlocked nightstand.
Scott was one of the most mild-mannered players -- off the field, anyway -- on the Buckeyes' 2002 national championship team. Always courteous and cordial, he appeared to be a model citizen before leaving for the NFL after his senior season in 2003.
So this ugly episode is surprising. But with all that has happened since Sept. 7, 1979 -- the launch date of ESPN, which turned the reporting of sports information into a round-the-clock fixation -- you'd think we would have learned not to be shocked by anything involving any athlete. Yet we keep having these jaw-dropping moments, continually forgetting that, as Mark Twain put it, "Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."
The truth is that few know where athletes go or what they do there upon leaving the locker room.
A retired NFL writer once told me that O.J. Simpson was the most accommodating and gracious athlete he ever interviewed. Roger Clemens was thought to be a lot of things -- ornery, combative and arrogant, to name a few -- but cheater and philanderer weren't part of the for-public-consumption equation. Len Bias absolutely, positively could not have died because of a cocaine bender. Until he did.
The temptation to turn "good" athletes into angels derives from our actually wanting to be duped. We seek to avoid the sharp corners and rough edges of reality and instead fill our sports world with dream furniture, which C.S. Lewis described as the only kind on which you never stub your toes or bang your knee.
We know we should separate the performer from the person, but doing so is difficult. We want athletes to be shiny and colossal in scale; everything about them to be bigger if not necessarily inherently better than ourselves.
Still, keeping a healthy separation between the star and the moon of which Twain spoke must happen. Otherwise, it becomes too easy to slip into cynicism, disappointment and judgment.
The safest and sanest way to enjoy sports is to appreciate the abilities of athletes without endeavoring to know them, because sometimes to know them is not to love them.
Rob Oller is a sports reporter for The Dispatch.
roller@dispatch.com
LINK
